SubClass Balance Issues in release 226

Ok, so here's my feelings at the moment, based on what I have experienced, what scores are logged and what feedback I have had.

So, my thoughts.

Monster/Medic Master

I think the Extreme Monsters subclass is scoring too highly. On average, players are getting more than 20% extra score with the Extreme Monsters than they are with the M/MM class. And the base M/MM class is scoring slightly too high.

The Extreme Medic is perhaps scoring highest of all, but I am prepared to leave that as is. It is self limiting - the more that play the subclass, the less xp they will get. Plus as more General players get healing defense sents, the xp return will decrease.

All the M/MM hybrids are scoring low.
So, my thoughts are:

Reduce the power of pets. I didn't nerf them in this build when I nerfed other things because I wanted more information. They are still too strong. I think the best way to do this is to reduce the health of pets. Engineers spawns start at a low health, and they need the health bonus to get them up to a reasonable level. So I think rather than pet health being by default the same as the monster health, they should start lower e.g. 75%, which can then be boosted as now by Monster Health Bonus.

Ability Monster Damage Bonus reduced from +5% per level to +2% per level

Let M/MM Hybrids buy level 4 Experienced Healing, instead of just level 2.

WeaponMasters
I think WMs and the WM hybrids are too weak. So

Increase Advanced Damage Bonus to be 3% per level instead of 2% per level. This will give WMs up to 10% extra damage, and hybrids 5% extra.

Allow Hybrids an extra level of Vampire. So they can buy level 5 instead of level 4. (The AM/WM will be limited to 4 instead of 3, as it also gets VampireSurge)

Engineers

Sentinel Specialists. I don't think these are particularly overpowered, but I still want to encourage the move from offensive sentinels to AutoGuns and Defense Sentinels. So I think reduce the normal health of the offensive sentinels to 250 to match the defense sentinel, and increase the damage from the AutoGuns.

Vehicle Specialists are scoring too high. And there are other issues with HellBender spamming and Paladins, so slightly (and I mean slightly) reduce the health of HellBenders, Mantas, Ion Tanks and Paladins

Adrenaline Masters
Not sure at the moment I need to make any changes.
The hybrids are a bit underpowered. The changes to the hybrids above will make a difference, but I think let's also give them Adrenaline Surge 1.

General
No change at this stage. I suspect it is overpowered, but let's see when we get higher levels on.

Nothing too major, just a few tweaks. Some up, some down.

I told you general was overpowered lol

Szlat If you want to encourage the sentinel master to be more offensive with the autoguns its ok but we are so weak against a monster in a battle with a link gun, sent masters dont have shield regen, health regen, adren regen to gain heal,vampirism, energy leech, medic weapon or vampire surge as the other classes. The auto guns are kinda limited, because when you use your main gun to target a monster you have to be near of it so the autoguns start shooting at it, Ive tried my self and I get hit a lot because of the range. You can balance this with some alternatives I would like to share.

1.- Give the ability to get shield regen at max, increase the range when targeting a monster so the autoguns start shooting Or make the autoguns start shooting when you shoot with any handheld weapon, for example I see a titan and Im really far away from it so I start shooting from that distance and the sentinels start shooting, like If I can control their shooting and can shoot anything at any distance like controling their fire.

To add more playstyle to this sentinel master you can add the classic autoguns but with the increased targeting range to activate them.

Add another type of autogun that shoots when u shoot. So If I want to shoot at a wall they will shoot too.

Or we can be the defense/shield heal type.

Sentinel masters are pretty good making bases ( Bases are their first defense in game without them they will not survive ) so how about increasing the teamplay adding to them enhaced shield healing so they can heal shield up to 250 they will heal at their base with blasts or with their link gun just like the medic class but shield oriented, and add a skill that increases exp from shield healing per level. To make it work good they can put defense sentinels near the base that gives 1 adrenaline max per sentinel so they will protect base from projectiles and givin adrenaline to the members inside the base and refilling sent master with adren so they can heal teammates with blasts.

I forgot about increasing the range of the Autoguns. I will set them much higher. And they are a lot more useful with a longer range.
But in the meantime, you can always spawn the autoguns in the middle of the map with a def sent, and keep yourself at a distance. You don't have to be as close as the Autoguns.

But I am not sure about increasing shield healing yet.

If you are to do any increasing with the shield, the extreme engineers need it most of all.

Elite wrote:

If you are to do any increasing with the shield, the extreme engineers need it most of all.

Yes they too

Re: Shield Healing

I'd rather see sent spec and extreme engi have shield blast (even if it didn't shield themselves).
I really miss it from a team standpoint

Szlat wrote:

Ok, so if the only way to compare subclasses is for an individual, then lets try that way.

So assume I have a player who plays 3 subclasses A, B and C, and his average xp per minute for each subclass is 8, 10 and 13.
Then from his perspective, B is 1.25 times as good as A, and C is 1.3 times as good as B.

Now if I do those checks across all players who have played multiple subclasses, I will get a set of ratios comparing the subclasses.
\

The problem with this is that for any given person, certain classes will better match their playing style. I am very much an in-their-face player for the most part on DC (having adapted from a hide and snipe style, or tricks/traps style elsewhere), and so I am best suited for WM or AM (which I play differently than a number of others), and medic or engi are less suitable for me. This will show in my scores. Others will show similar,or differing matches/mismatches.

Szlat- You said you were lowering the percentage of pet damage bonus for each level, does that mean you end up on the same percentage of pet damage bonus once you have maxed it (ie you've accordingly added more potential levels)? So you are spreading the cost to max it over more levels?

So more levels are required in order to max pet damage bonus?

Ability Monster Damage Bonus reduced from +5% per level to +2% per level

Current Build- The skill is maxed at lvl 20, pets get +100% damage bonus
Next Build- The skill is maxed at lvl 20 too, pets get +40% damage bonus

Thats howI think it will be implemented

Ryuxen is correct.

Szlat wrote:

Ryuxen is correct.

haha, that's horrific. I don't get what this is all being based on... there's only one or two monster masters who regularly play, and that's the level 1,000,000 cribbage and myself. I may get higher scores than most high level engineers, but that was the case before I was a high enough level to have any monsters anyway. It's more about attacking mentality than perks of the subclass. My own scores and cribbage's are hardly fair criteria to bring forth an assumption that the monster class is too powerful. Indeed, the perks of Ryuxens "cyber" adrenaline account (lower level than my monster account) means it's usually a close-run thing between myself and him for XP when we both play anyway.

I was thinking we should all meet up on a different neutral server for a deathmatch, to see who actually has the most skill. That might be another variable you disclude, Szlat

It was almost more fun when I was a low level getting all my XP by myself; actually making the effort to have a decent standard of monster only to have it taken away is just annoying.

Sure, give weapons masters more power, give those fast-shooting red laser type sentinels a little less juice, and make hellbenders slightly harder to attain, I don't see any logical reasons for alterations to pets. TBH I could do with MORE health for them, or more adrenaline to stop them dying 100% of the time past wave 12. Everything else seems to be outrageously more resilient in comparison atm.

More pressing issues are things like block health (need to be decreased so people don't camp in bases so much), also make the enemy monsters much more powerful, so, you know, it's like "invasion", hard to survive, and give extras to *really* high levels, like a level 200 shouldn't be maxed out on all stats and thus equal to a level 800 (otherwise you should probably move the server to China with the rest of communism).

for one you dont get the kills... your monsters do. I've looked at the scores and they are way skewed to the monsters. cribbage at least gets kills of his own. sentinals are stationary so their attack range is limited while monsters are mobile so their range is alot less limited. engis and adren masters dont regen health like medic and wm so forcing them to play that way often has them dead in short time... expecially when some medics (cough) dont heal the person standing right next to them during the time between waves

Trooper wrote:

for one you dont get the kills... your monsters do. I've looked at the scores and they are way skewed to the monsters. cribbage at least gets kills of his own. sentinals are stationary so their attack range is limited while monsters are mobile so their range is alot less limited. engis and adren masters dont regen health like medic and wm so forcing them to play that way often has them dead in short time... expecially when some medics (cough) dont heal the person standing right next to them during the time between waves

You're one to talk trooper, I was getting plenty more kills than you before I even had decent monsters

. Of course skaarj get more actual kills than me, they're skaarj, can only hit one thing at a time so tend to finish it unlike other things (sentinels/vehicles/high damage weapons which hit multiple targets, less "kills" but moar XP) and their abilities have been built up over time. Heaven forbid they do well because their stats are maxed, same as I'd do awesome playing with all the self-improvement perks an adrenaline/weapons account would provide.

IDK if Cribbage gets more kills than me. I remember viewing his stats once and being unimpressed. I expect he gets more kills than me but the same if not less than my brother (Freddo) (inb4 same person etc).

Yeah I don't like engineers at all, it's such a negative class, I never got the point of loading a game just to stick up a few defense sentinels and idle for 30mins. Taking away from attacking classes like monsters will probably kill the gameplay completely.

I get more kills with my link than I do with sentinals even running a "kill sent" the entire map. I also never said anything about my kills compared with yours. engineer constructions are also built up over time so that point is not valid.